The gunmen, dressed in fatigues and wearing turbans, stormed in well before dawn aboard pickup trucks, announcing their arrival with a burst of gunfire.

Dozens of employees were eating breakfast at the time before heading off to the vast network of tubes and silos of the Ain Amenas gas field, where hundreds of Algerians and foreigners work to extract natural gas from the arid sands of the Sahara.

"God is great," the gunmen cried.

It was the beginning of a terrifying ordeal — one in which foreign hostages would come under fire from both the gunmen holding them and the Algerian government soldiers trying to free them. For many of the captives, it is an ordeal that has yet to end.

A former hostage speaks Friday after being freed from a gas facility in Algeria where Islamist militants were holding him since Wednesday. The Algerian government says about 100 out of 135 foreign hostages have escaped or been freed. Twelve hostages are reported to have been killed. (Reuters/Algerian TV)

By Friday, about 100 of the 135 foreign workers on the site had been freed and 18 of an estimated 30 kidnappers had been slain, according to the Algerian government, still leaving a major hostage situation centered on the plant's main refinery.

The Algerian government said 12 workers, both foreign and Algerian, were confirmed dead. The extremists have put the number at 35. In Washington, U.S. officials said one American — a Texan — was known to have died.

Another American hostage, Steve Wysocki, who is the co-worker of Somewhere Farms in Elbert, was flown out of Algeria on Friday on a U.S. military plane. His wife Kristi told dressage-news.com that her husband and other employees communicated with text messages while in hiding.

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Some hostages were forced to wear explosives on their bodies. Others hid under beds and on rooftops, praying to survive but expecting death. One was shot in the back while his fellow captives looked on. Left by their captors with their cellphones, some phoned home with terrifying accounts of the horrors unfolding all around.

A Briton called his wife while he was being taken hostage, saying he had been forced to sit at his desk with Semtex, an explosive, strapped to his chest. After the man, Garry Barlow, 49, called his wife, Lorraine, 52, The Daily Mail reported.

"He said: 'I'm sat here at my desk with Semtex strapped to my chest. The local army have already tried and failed to storm the plant, and they've said that if that happens again they are going to kill us all,' " a friend told the newspaper.

The gunmen, fighters with a group called Al Mulathameen, said they were acting to avenge the French intervention in nearby Mali, Algerian officials said. But there were indications that the attack had been planned long before the French military began its offensive to recapture the northern half of that country from Islamist insurgents.

The attackers appeared to know the site well, even the fact that disgruntled Algerian catering workers were planning a strike.

"We know you're oppressed, we've come here so that you can have your rights," the militants told Algerians at the facility, according to one Algerian former hostage. Another hostage said the fighters had asked about the plans for a strike.

"The terrorists were covered with explosives, and they had detonators," said a senior Algerian government official briefed on the crisis. He said the situation remained a standoff Friday, with "a few terrorists holding a few hostages."

Former captives said several of the fighters appeared to be foreign, with non-Algerian accents. One Algerian worker said that some of them might have been Libyan and Syrian, and that one might have been French. Another gunman who spoke impeccable English was assigned to speak to the many foreigners.

When the Algerian military eventually intervened, the situation grew more chaotic. According to one witness, Algerian helicopters attacked several jeeps that were carrying hostages. The fate of at least some of those hostages remains unknown.

From the start, it was clear that the gunmen only wished to harm foreigners. Algerian workers, along with other Muslims who could prove their faith by reciting from the Quran, were herded into one area, workers said.

"They told us, 'We are your brothers. You have telephones: call your families to reassure them,' " said Moussa, an Algerian worker who asked to be identified only by his first name.

Algerian women in the group of hostages were released right away Wednesday morning, Moussa said, but the militants initially declined to release the Algerian men, saying it was for their own good.

"We're afraid that if we free you, the army will shoot at you," he quoted them as saying.

Foreigners were taken away, their hands bound with rubber, both Algerian witnesses said. Some of the employees resisted. Several Filipino workers who had refused to leave their rooms were beaten, Moussa said.

At one point, the fighters shot a European as he tried to flee, he said. The other Algerian described seeing a middle-aged European man, perhaps a security official, shot in the back in the cafeteria, where the lights had been switched off. He thought the man had died.

Before being captured, Stephen McFaul, 36, an electrical engineer from Belfast, barricaded himself in a room with a colleague at the first sound of gunfire, using his cellphone to assure his family that he was all right.

"I joked that I was from Northern Ireland and that I had been through better riots," he told the colleague, according to John Morrissey, a representative for his family in Belfast who was responding to reporters for media organizations around the world.

McFaul, who had been sent to work in Algeria only three weeks ago, was seized a few hours later, Morrissey said, and ultimately placed in the last jeep of a five-jeep convoy that came under heavy air attack from Algerian forces.

The first four jeeps were destroyed. When McFaul's vehicle veered off the road, he and a fellow worker managed to climb out of the back window, which had been broken. Their hands had been tied, their mouths taped and they had been forced to wear vests loaded with explosives, Morrissey said.

The two made a run for it, reaching the security forces, who disarmed the explosives.

Other foreigners like Alexandre Berceaux, a French employee of a catering company working at the site, hid themselves as best they could.

"I stayed hidden for nearly 40 hours in my bedroom," Berceaux told Europe 1 Radio. "I was under the bed, and I put boards everywhere just in case. I had food, water; I didn't know how long I would be there."

He said he was certain he would be killed.

"When the Algerian soldiers, whom I thank, came to get me, I didn't even know it was over," he said. The soldiers came with his colleagues, he said, "otherwise I would never have opened the door."

Berceaux said Algerian soldiers found some British hostages hiding on the roof and were still searching the site for others when he was escorted to a nearby military base, from which he expected to be transferred to France. Others might still be hidden, he said.

Among the casualties was a French citizen identified as Yann Desjeux, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said in a statement on Friday evening. Desjeux had contacted his family by telephone at midday Thursday and died sometime later, according to the French newspaper Sud Ouest, which also had spoken to Desjeux on Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Toll at a glance

Deaths: Algeria's news agency reports that 12 hostages have been killed since the start of the Algerian military operation to free workers held hostage by militants at a natural gas plant. U.S. officials said one American worker, a Texan, has been found dead.

Freed: The news service reports that nearly 100 of 135 foreign workers have been freed. It wasn't clear how the government arrived at that tally, which was far higher than the 41 foreigners the militants had claimed.

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American found dead in standoff • WASHINGTON — One American worker at a natural gas complex in Algeria has been found dead, U.S. officials said Friday as the Obama administration sought to secure the release of Americans still being held by militants on the third day of the hostage standoff in the Sahara.

How Frederick Buttaccio, a Texas resident, died was not noted in a statement from State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. A spokesman for the Buttaccio family in the Houston suburb of Katy, Texas, declined to comment.

"We express our deepest condolences to his family and friends," Nuland said. "Out of respect for the family's privacy, we have no further comment."

It was not immediately clear whether Buttaccio was the only American killed in the hostage standoff.

U.S. officials said that Buttaccio's remains were recovered Friday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she spoke by telephone with Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal to get an update on Americans and others in danger at the sprawling Ain Amenas refinery 800 miles south of Algiers. She said the "utmost care must be taken to preserve innocent life."

U.S. officials have refused to confirm the number of Americans still captive or unaccounted for because they say that might compromise their safety. The Associated Press

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